


hundreds of ways to kneel

by gatheringbones



Series: such wolves as you [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Pining, disgusting UST turned into terrible honest conversation, turned into KISSING
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 19:56:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5177720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gatheringbones/pseuds/gatheringbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In truth, Lavellan has become very tired of being kissed out of the blue and then very quickly walked away from. She decides to face it head on. </p><p>Solas is, reluctant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hundreds of ways to kneel

* * *

 

_“She hardly ever thought of him. He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer.”_

― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

 

* * *

 

 

It had started out simply enough. **  
**

He was often in her rooms of late, so it was no surprise when she made her way up the long, claustrophobic tower stairs and found him on her divan, his legs crooked before him and a book balanced on his knees. She had confided in him how unnerving the quiet and isolation of her chambers could be, and he had been very polite in offering to keep her company, when his own interests did not call him away.

It hadn’t been so unusual. She entertained there from time to time. Varric had been the first to show her how the bell pull for the servants worked, and there had been several evenings involving wine and some members of her company toasting bread and cheese over the fire. At Josephine’s advice, she had even had a new bed brought in, and several of the furnishings replaced. (There had been a very unfortunate tapestry covering the hall closet depicting the righteous fall of the Dales. As far as Laeta was aware, it was now being used as a makeshift horse blanket.)

There was nothing out of the ordinary about it at all. He enjoyed seeing her additions to her library, he had said. And she had believed him, because of course she did.

The carpet on the stairs was soft, and her bare feet were noiseless upon it. She scuffed them, even so, but she needn’t have. He had heard the door click softly behind her, and his ears were turned towards her approach.

Solas looked up as she reached the last stair leading to the landing, and his voice was rueful. “Apologies,” he said. “The Lady Ambassador is showing the keep to a trade delegation from Nevarra. They wished to spend an inordinate amount of time in the rotunda. It was, better if I were not there.” He lifted his book slightly. “You purchased the new translation, I see.”

Laeta grimaced, one hand still on the balcony, “Plagiarised,” she said. “And badly. Half of it is pure Genetivi, and the other half–” she waved a hand in dismissal, then said drily, “biased. In favor of the Chantry, of course.”

“Ah,” he said. “And we all had such high hopes for–” he turned the book, and squinted at the title. “the Heresies of Shartan.”

She laughed, relaxing a little, and approached the divan. He obliged her by drawing up his knees slightly and making more room for her at the end, where she sat, grateful for both the gesture and the relief of getting off her feet.

He had hesitated; she’d noticed that. Just for the space of a breath.

But he’d made space for her.

 _Generous,_ she thought.  _Seeing as it’s mine._

She cleared her head abruptly. That wasn’t why she was here, and it wasn’t why she had sat down.

Light flooded her rooms. The windows were high and gorgeous in their craftsmanship, and left interlocking squares of multicolored light all over the carpet as the late afternoon sunlight shot through the stained glass. The surrounding mountains were barren in their whiteness, clear and cold and as clean as picked bones, but sheltering. Safe.

There was no fire in the grate, and the windows were as wide open as they ever were. The room was shockingly cold– she felt her cheeks pinking with it– but here Solas sat, bareheaded and barefoot, the long clean lines of his collarbone showing at the neck of his ill-fitting shirt as if he didn’t feel the chill at all.

She knew that pulling the bell would summon servants to close the windows and start a fire in the hearth, bring her hot tea and a hot meal she had needed for several of the last few exhausting hours now, but she did not.

She waited, gathering herself, her hands in her lap. She said nothing.

After a moment, Solas very carefully closed the book, and set it down on the floor next to the divan.

His face showed nothing but calm. The lines in his brow were smooth and quiet, his mouth firm but untroubled. His eyes were tired, but they often were.

He waited for her to speak, and she was grateful for that as well. Slowly, she collected herself, and collected what she knew she must say.

“You love me,” she said, quietly.

Solas looked away.

His face did not change, even so.

“Ah,” he said again, at last. Then, with the barest amount of irony, “So I have said.”

He did not move, but she saw the desire to do so creep over him. His knee remained where it leaned against the back of the divan, but the muscle running up his thigh tensed, then released, as jumpy as a spring. His hands remained where he had folded them on his stomach- they did not go white-knuckled, but it was a near thing.

He looked trapped, she thought.

It did not move her to relinquish her hold.

“I gather,” she said, as carefully as she could, “that this presents some difficulties for you.”

Solas continued looking anywhere but at her. His brow was pinched.

The door to the balcony on the side of her rooms was open, the flagstones bare and swept clean. It was so high even the birds did not frequent it, and it was there she had stood when he had turned on his heel halfway through rejecting her for the second and doubtlessly final time and kissed her.

Very well, as it turned out. Very, comprehensively.

Afterwards, he hadn’t so much left as fled, and even if she hadn’t directly sought him out, it wasn’t until she left for the western deserts of Orlais that she had seen him again. Where, she had noted, he had acted very cool, very calm, and if she was being very honest– insultingly detached.

It hadn’t quite made her angry. Or rather, it approached that point, then quickly faded away as she put what she knew of him to the problem of his coolness.

They were in her rooms, after all. In her castle. She was aware of the balance of power, just as she was aware of his reluctance to act– but the balcony was still in her line of sight.

Laeta did not speak again, merely watched the pulse in his neck and listened to her own, deep in her chest.

At last, he said, “I meant it. What I said to you, after-” he stopped. She watched the life bleed back into his face, slowly at first, but faster as he relinquished the mask she knew he could don again at a moment’s notice.

He looked up, and directly at her again, and as calm as his voice was, his eyes were  _wretched._

“It is foolish of me,” he said. “It will, complicate things, of that I am aware.”

“Considerations,” she said, using his own word for it.

“Yes,” he whispered, so very still.

“Would you rather,” she said, watching his face closely “that you did not?”

His pulse slowed in his neck, even as he looked away again. He did not move, and he did not flee from her.

“No,” he said, very softly.

Laeta relaxed.

Her breathing came easier, and when she counted her breaths it was to give him time and space to recover rather than to safeguard her own.

She reached out after a moment and placed her hand deliberately on his knee.

He did not pull away from her, but his face looked no happier. If this was a trap then he sat squarely in the center of it.

It hurt her; she would not pretend that it did not.

But she could do her best to mend that.

“Solas,” she said gently, “Would it help if I told you that…. I like you very much. That I’ve only just met you, that I’m– I’m  _attracted_  to you…”

 _Clearly,_  she thought sourly, thinking back with the kind of dull horror she was becoming distressingly used to. 

Solas blinked. He was listening, whatever he was thinking. She took encouragement from it.

“You love me,” she said after a pause, and squeezed his knee. “I don’t pretend to know how or why. But I– I don’t…” She stopped. Gathered herself, and looked at him a little sheepishly. “There’s a  _war_  on.”

He looked at her once more, and his face was very still.

She counted four beats, slow and steady, then said very softly, “And I don’t have time to figure out how I feel.”

A peculiar expression stole over his face, and he unhooked his fingers from one another and relaxed them on his stomach “That is… a comfort.” he said drily.

Laeta exhaled a shaky laugh, and patted his knee. She removed her hand afterwards, wanting above all else to give him his space, but he looked less like he was about to bolt and that made her feel better.

She rested her hand on the back of the divan instead, and looked at him with what she was aware was more than a little exasperation. “I’m aware that I…. outrank you. Whatever that means.”

Solas’s face went very neutral, a thing he generally did when he knew full well how he felt about a situation and chose to keep those feelings to himself. She chose to feel reassured by this as well.

“I have a mark on my hand that stopped killing me only because it seemed to have changed its mind,” she said. “I have no idea why.”

She looked at her hands, and her voice dropped. “My family has stopped sending me news. I– I don’t have time to check the reports as often as I should. I am trying as best I can, Leliana is helping me as much as she can but I am a  _scholar_ , not an assassin, and when she brings up things like who to eliminate and how quickly, I want to take her by the shoulders and shout at her until she stops being  _made_  this way.”

The time had long since passed when she needed to bite her tongue– she did so now. “My point,” she said, “is that the next few months will test me more than I ever anticipated. And that I have no idea if I’ll ever be able to think about whether it’s right and proper for you to love me, or if I feel the same way, or what that means.”

She let her hand fall from the divan.

“I’m am fine with you loving me Solas. I think that’s– it’s–”

 _Beautiful,_  she wanted to say.  _It makes me braver._

But she couldn’t. The scales were already balanced as tightly as she could manage them– she didn’t want to put any more weight on either side.

She tried again, “I want–”

She stopped mid-sentence when he slowly reached down and captured her hand where it lay. She wasn’t sure when he had sat upright, or when he had leaned forward; he had done it so quietly she hadn’t even noticed.

His fingers wrapped around the fine bones of her wrist, but his thumb lay in the center of her palm, where it rubbed, once.

Solas stared as her hand in his as if he wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking at. Slowly, he dragged his eyes up to her face.

Her breath was very shallow, and she wasn’t sure if she was in control of her own voice, but she tried as best she could. “I want you to love me,” she said softly.

His voice cracked, just barely. “I do,” he said.  His eyes were stricken.

 _Courage,_  she thought.  _Courage courage courage._

She pulled gently at his hand where it remained around hers. He let her; he did not resist. He did not let go even when she pressed her lips lightly to the outside of his wrist, then more firmly, her eyes never leaving his.

He broke first, or perhaps she did.

His other hand went to the back of her neck– she tipped forward– and then their knees tangled as she landed on top of him with one hand braced beside them both. They should have toppled over the edge entirely had he not wrapped his arm around her and held for dear life. He held her fast and he kissed her, a stuttered botch of a kiss, that then turned into him shuddering as she stroked the skin beneath the line of his jaw and deepened the kiss of her own accord.

 _Courage,_  she thought giddily as his fingers tightened in her hair and then relaxed in a caress all the way down the line of her back.

 _Courage,_  she thought, as she scraped her teeth on his lower lip and he sucked in a breath so fast she feared she might have hurt him, only to surge upward to kiss her harder. His arm tightened around her, a clutch that turned into a slow slide of his hand up into the roots of her hair.

She reached for courage, and courage found her. It was enough.

 

* * *

 


End file.
